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Talkrational: I've read things you people wouldn't believe. Spacial narratives foregrounding biopower. I learned about discursive foodways being written on the body. All those insights will be lost after comprehensives, like tears in rain. Time to die.

In the US I don't believe they are actually a minority. That gets into a definition game but I think the case is pretty easy to make.

Interesting position. I'd like to see your definition. I'll use my wife as an example. She self-identifies as Christian, though she doesn't attend church, or say prayers. I'm not really sure about her thoughts on an afterlife, and lives a nominally secular life style. She has some kind of belief in a god of her own definition that is loosely based on the biblical god.

I think a large number of people who self-identify as Christian in the US would generally fit that description. Does your definition of atheists include those people?

post atheism is really a better description but yeah. When religion is only a cultural thing, the stuff that happens in the megachurches is just headlines in the wtf papers. In my social life, I only know one person who attends a church and she is a science teacher with whom I've collaborated on curricula and lesson plans many times. Her religion is real but has nothing whatsoever to do with what or how we understand the physical world. The religious concept of scriptural and church authority over social values is anachronistic. In a world that has next to nothing in common with the world that inspired the old norms, those who desperately cling to ideas that no longer actually work in practice are just in the way.

Love is like a magic penny if you hold it tight you won't have any if you give it away you'll have so many they'll be rolling all over the floor

Nah. Atheism has been the default for a hundred years simply because education has been a priority. Religion has been receding since the enlightenment and its only remaining relevance is provincial politics. The religious who see the writing on the wall know that violence and information control are their only hope. But information can outrun the armies of the Pope and the armies of the caliph. It's a lost cause even though the last gasps are extremely violent.

Have you spent much time in the midwest, or south?("America profunda" as a friend of mine from Spain calls it, with eyes widened with trepidation)

Not a lot but some. Yes I recognize that religion is more prevalent in areas with more homogeneity and less contact with people with different backgrounds. There's a reason I took gelatoguy's side in the gelatocaust. When confronted with unfamiliar and mildly threatening people, his first reaction was both logical and predictable. His second reaction was deeply human and spiritual even. The seeds of ignorance have their own undoing right in the texts used to justify the original authoritarian and xenophobic tendencies.

Love is like a magic penny if you hold it tight you won't have any if you give it away you'll have so many they'll be rolling all over the floor

sounds like you raised yours similar to how I raised mine. My son never developed any religious tendencies. My daughter did, but I think it's because I allowed them to go their own way and she started going to church because her friends invited her. I just remained neutral and she chose to believe, but later around 10 or 11 when the church thing started. She's pretty smart and I think she'll find her way out. Now that she is an adult whenever she brings up the subject I usually disagree with her and I explain why.

Uh-oh, you accidentally pushed one of my buttons with this turn of phrase.

I'm tempted to say: I hope she arrived at the belief without choosing it.

You're right. It was an accident.

Poor choice of words on my part. I think I meant to say she choose to go to church. I didn't attempt to dissuade her. I raised both my kids to think for themselves, question everything. So I had given her some critical thinking skills to, if not choose, maybe decide things based on good evidence. So it was her choice to go to church and a part of me thinks that a part of her does have some choice in what she believes. I mean I'm not sure she really believes as much as she might want to because she has her critical thinking skills. Whether she chooses to use them on her beliefs, probably at times.